Just as she was beginning to brush her teeth, she heard doors open in the hall. Darren was the first to appear in the doorway of the bathroom, though she wished it could have been Logan. She leaned against the wall, scrubbing away with her toothbrush as her teacher came in to start brushing his own. He was wearing a very formal suit, button down shirt and slacks like he always did, but his tie was undone and hanging loose around his neck.
“Good morning, Katey. Did you sleep well?” he asked.
Katey replied only with a nod, seeing as she wouldn’t be able to speak coherently with her mouth full of toothpaste lather. He smiled kindly and brushed his own, leaning against the adjacent wall from her.
Dustin came in just a few seconds after. “Mornin’, Katey Kat!” he exclaimed rather cheerfully.
Katey nodded a greeting as she watched him comb and gel his hair in the mirror. She awkwardly squeezed past him to spit and rinse her mouth out in one of the sinks.
“You’re wearing the same clothes from last night. Did you sleep in them?” Dustin asked, plucking his fingers at his hair to make it look just right.
He wore a pair of dress jeans and a button down shirt to match, but the shirt was completely undone, showing his chiseled features underneath. Katey averted her eyes.
“Yeah. I guess I fell asleep in the living room. Is Logan up yet?” she asked, leaning in the doorway.
Darren maneuvered around Dustin and rinsed his mouth from the toothpaste. “Logan told me he wasn’t taking you to school this morning. Didn’t he tell you?”
Katey blinked and looked away. “No, he didn’t.” He told me lots of things, but that wasn’t one of them.
Ben approached from behind and slid past her to enter the bathroom. Now Katey understood why they had a large bathroom.
“We figured ya’ll had a ton of time to talk last night after we all went to bed.” Ben grabbed his gold toothbrush and began his routine. Her math teacher wore a pair of slacks and a bright orange button down shirt completely buttoned and tucked in.
“We didn’t talk at all. I just fell asleep and I guess he brought me up to my bed.”
“Oh, was that all?” Dustin jested, hiding the fact that he knew exactly what the two did after the movie was over.
Katey rolled his eyes and folded her arms. “So, where is he?” she asked.
Darren took the two ends of the tie in his hands and watched himself in the mirror as he twisted the ends around each other and formed the knot he desired. “He left us a note saying that he went for a run. We haven’t even seen him for breakfast. He does that sometimes.” Darren paused and fished a folded up piece of notebook paper from his pocket and handed it to Katey.
She snatched it from him and ran off to her room to read it eagerly.
Katey,
Please meet me after school at the house as soon as you get out of your last class. I have something important to talk to you about in private.
Logan
Katey wondered first if something was wrong and secondly if this meant he would confess his feelings to her face. Then perhaps, they could finally get on having the relationship she so desperately wanted to have with him.
With a giddy heart, she dressed in her black hooded jacket and a clean pair of jeans and walked downstairs. The teachers had left by now and she had the house to herself, but she didn’t eat a breakfast, too nervous about the coming meeting with Logan in the afternoon.
She spent a few moments gazing out over the garden from behind the sliding glass doors. It was truly a beautiful sight, but she could just faintly see dark rain clouds cresting over the tree line in the distance.
***
By the time she arrived to Dustin’s class for internship, her nerves were in a tangled mass. Just a few hours away and she would see Logan.
“Afternoon, Katey Kat! How was your sixth period?” Dustin greeted, shuffling papers at his desk when she walked in and set her bag down. They were the only ones in the classroom so far.
“Didn’t have one. Just sat the whole time with nothing to do,” she answered with a sigh.
Dustin glanced up to her and saw the anxious look in her eyes. “You seem a bit down. Something bothering you?”
Katey let a smile curl her lips. “It’s going to sound a bit silly, but I haven’t seen Logan all day.”
“And you miss him?”
“Kind of. I’m so used to seeing him all the time. I half expected him to come up and see me or something, even if he didn’t have a class to go to.” Katey sat herself in her chair at the counter and leaned her elbow on it. “And why didn’t he tell me about not taking me to school? I just wonder if something’s wrong.”
Dustin’s chuckle threw her out of her musings. She peered up at him in puzzlement. “Something’s always wrong with Logan,” he said. “The only thing you should be worrying about is if he’s eaten anything today.”
She tilted her head. “Why is that?”
“Well…” Dustin glanced up to the door as students began pouring in. He came up beside her and leaned on the counter, bending his head low like he was telling her something confidential. “Logan, and all of us, need to eat the right meals enough times during the day or we get really cranky… And I mean really cranky. Like, scary cranky, if you know what I mean.”
Katey slowly nodded. She remembered on Logan’s first day when he seemed upset during lunch and Dustin came to fetch him. Then there was the time that Ben nearly blew up during class and she wondered if that was the hunger talking.
“Have you seen him eat today?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
Dustin shook his head. “Not at all. But, we need to trust him that he’s going to do what he needs to do. Sometimes I wonder if we give him too much freedom, but there are times when he surprises us. I just hope this is one of those times.”
He gave her a reassuring smile and returned to preparing for the class. Katey leaned back at her seat and finally noticed the huge stack of papers to grade from the past two days of testing.
Katey had the whole two hours to grade the tests and all the while she was thinking about Logan. If he was ok, if he had eaten something and tried to figure out what their secret meeting could be about.
Perhaps he knew that she had been listening to him talk last night and was too embarrassed. That, coupled with the imprinting fiasco couldn’t have been good for his ego.
When the end of the class period was creeping upon them, Dustin came to check on her progress. “How’s it coming?” he asked quietly.
Katey gave a heavy sigh and held her head in her hand. “It bothers me that I’m so close to being done and I have to leave soon.”
“You don’t have to leave. I have some errands to run after class anyway. You can work until I get back, then we can go hunt Logan down and stuff a pound of deer down his throat.”
She gave a suppressed giggle. “Ok, just let me call him and let him know what I’m doing. He wanted me to meet him after school to talk about something.”
Dustin gave her a nod and permission to step outside to make the call. Her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding in her chest as she pulled out the phone and dialed it. She was nervous that he would answer… or not answer.
Unfortunately, the phone didn’t even ring. It gave her a disconnected message like the number was invalid. She checked it twice and it was correct from what she could tell.
Crestfallen, she exhaled the breath she was holding, hung up and drudged back into class as the bell rang. Just as she was closing the doors, she could hear the tiny pings of rain droplets hit the tin awning over the walkways.
She reported what happened to Dustin as he was shrugging on a denim jacket. He looked puzzled.
“That’s weird. He must have turned off his phone or something. You still want to stay?”
Katey thought for a moment, but then nodded. “Yeah, I really want to get this knocked out so I’m not thinking about it.”
Dustin smiled and scribbled down three phone numbers
on a piece of paper. “Alright. If you need me, here’s mine, Darren’s, and Ben’s phone numbers. You call us if you need anything or something happens.” He set the paper down on the counter beside her pile of tests. “I won’t be long, so I’ll see you in a bit, ok?” He patted her shoulder and walked out of the classroom, locking the door behind him.
Outside, the rain was steadily picking up.
To make the time go by faster, she pulled her mp3 player out of her bag and plugged it up with Dustin’s speakers that he usually used for movies.
She pulled up Evanescence from the lists, hit ‘play’ and cranked up the volume as loud as she thought it could go without disturbing the other teachers that may still be in their classrooms.
Time passed rather quickly and she even softly sang a few songs. She began to feel so much better, as if they music was a soothing balm to her fried nerves. All her anxious feelings about Logan faded in the therapeutic sounds of hard rock and rainfall. She forgot all about the outside world and all that existed were these tests and the music.
She didn’t know how much time had passed by the time she loaded all the grades into his laptop, but she knew that it must have been more than an hour because the album was now playing for the second time on her MP3 player.
She was now pretty much singing at the top of her lungs. Her fingers and knuckle joints ached from typing in all the test results, but she was just nearly done and she couldn’t stop now.
Outside, Katey could barely hear the pouring rain. She wouldn’t have even known it had begun to really storm outside if the electricity hadn’t gone out. Luckily, the speakers were cordless and the laptop was fully charged so she didn’t have to stop her work.
Just as she was about to enter the last batch of grades, someone banged furiously on the door, making her jump in her seat. It was probably just someone who was tired of her loud music and came to complain. Katey calmly got up and looked out the little window on the door, but could see no one. She stupidly opened the door to look out.
A gust of cold wind hit Katey and she was thrown back into the classroom. The door slammed shut in front of her and she was temporarily blinded by the suddenness of the attack.
When he eyes adjusted, Logan was standing there, his back against the door. Katey froze under his angry, golden glare. His hair and clothes were soaked and his face looked ashen as if he just ran a mile, or in his case, maybe a hundred miles. Water dripped from his nose and jacket, dampening the carpet underneath him.
“I was waiting for you. What the hell are you still doing here?” he growled.
She swallowed hard. “I tried to call you. I’ve been staying late grading some papers for Dustin.” Katey straightened her posture to show that he couldn’t intimidate her like that. However, she could feel her hands shaking so she casually put them in the pouch on her hoodie as she narrowed her eyes coldly at him. He should have answered his phone or made sure it was working. Katey wasn’t the one at fault here and she wasn’t about to admit it when he was in this condition.
“That’s no excuse,” he growled. “I asked you to meet me and the least you can do is that one little favor for me.” He bared his teeth angrily in a snarl. Katey began nervously backing up towards Dustin’s desk away from the door. She tried to keep her glare unwavering.
“Have you eaten today?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” he snapped.
“Logan, calm down.” She bit the words off slowly and sternly.
“Don’t tell me what to do! You have no authority over me!”
A flash of lightning struck outside and for a moment, Katey saw the image of a wolf growling down at her instead of Logan. She gulped and kept her face as blank as stone, even though she knew it was just her mind playing tricks on her.
She stopped her retreat and braced her legs like she was ready to run or stand and fight if she needed.
“Logan, you’re scaring me,” she finally confessed, hoping that it would snap him out of his blind rage.
“Of course I am. I’m nothing but a monster anyway, why shouldn’t you be afraid?” His voice was deep and menacing, sending chills down her back.
Logan marched towards her, his eyes glowing yellow with anger and hunger. Now her fear began to show, as he didn’t stop his advancing upon her. She turned to her right and ran straight into a desk, knocking herself off her feet. Another bolt of lightning struck and Logan trapped her in the chair, one hand on the desk and the other on the back of her chair. She could feel his hot breath melting her face.
“I’m tired of waiting on you to decide. We’ve done everything we can do make you feel welcome. We’ve let you in like you’re already a pack member. Do you know how many loups-garous would kill themselves just to be welcomed so unconditionally as you have been?”
Terror snaked through Katey as she thought she saw Logan’s face change into a monster’s, but she blinked and the image was gone again as before.
“We’ve bent over backwards for you and you tease me with your indecisiveness. I won’t take it any longer. Decide right now. Do you want to be a loup-garou or not?”
Logan was breathing heavy through his flared nostrils, his eyebrows were slanted into a scowl and he still was bearing his sharp canine teeth.
This wasn’t Logan, this wasn’t even the loup-garou inside of him that needed to feed. It was that desperation he’d mentioned the night before. He said these things, not because he wanted to scare her, but to make her realize that he couldn’t live a life wither her. Katey knew that if she refused, he might have crumbled and withered away in his unrequited love for her. But what if she said yes? What if she made that leap of faith? He was more than ready and so was Katey.
Katey gulped and took a deep breath. “Change me,” she answered softly.
She could hardly hear herself through the rain and music, but she knew he could hear everything from the blood racing under her skin to the throbbing of her frightened heart. Logan’s face softened a little and he looked normal for the first time that day, but there was still that anger and an unnatural thirst in his eyes.
He slowly moved his hands from the desk and grabbed her hips, pulling Katey to her feet. She held tightly onto his upper arms to steady herself and never averted from his flashing bright golden eyes. In those eyes, she could see her destiny and the future that she had begun searching for, always out of reach. It was a future Logan could give her, here and now. A future with him, with his pack, with a family and a purpose.
She could feel the heat of passion and anger radiating from him. The front of her shirt became damp as their bodies pressed against each other.
Logan’s face edged towards her and he leaned his forehead against her own like he did the day before. Katey tried to steady her own heavy breathing, but it was so hard with all of the adrenaline pumping through her. She had to stay perfectly still and submissive to make this work.
She wasn’t thinking about what she was saying or doing. Having Logan this close to her face thrilled her to the deepest core of her being. She blinked long and hard, and then stared up into his eyes once more as if to show that she was ready.
Logan dragged his soft, moist nose across her cheek and into her hair, breathing her scent in deeply. She could hear each breath he inhaled and exhaled that made her hairs twitch, sending waves of shocks pulsing through her body. The heat from his breath sent shivers through her extremities and sweat trickled down the small of her back.
He nudged his head against her temple, but she stayed perfectly still, not allowing her head to move, showing him that she was sturdy and strong enough.
He gently brushed her hair out of the way of her neck and pulled down the collar of her hoodie to reveal half of her shoulder and the entire side of her neck, water dripped from his fingertips, cooling her flushed skin.
Her heart was thumping so rapidly she could hear it pounding in her ears. Katey shook violently and squeezed her hands tigh
ter around Logan’s rock hard muscles, water seeping from his shirt onto her palms.
His lips brushed against her neck and slid down to the point where her neck and shoulder met. She felt a surge of electricity wash over her as the rock music played in the background and the lightning clashed once again outside the window, followed by a roll of bellowing thunder.
Katey could feel Logan’s hot breath on her skin and the low vibrations of Logan’s throat rumbling in a satisfying growl as his teeth grazed across her fragile skin. The growl was deep and low, rousing her senses.
For that moment, Katey didn’t think about anything. She didn’t think of how this would turn out. She didn’t think of how this would affect her. She didn’t think that this could kill her. She hadn’t even thought about the possibility of becoming what Logan was.
The only reason she said yes was because she wanted to be with him just as desperately as he did. He loved her and she knew that she loved him enough to want to spend every day with him… until the day she died… which might have been that day.
Logan gripped her arm to keep the hoodie from sliding up into his face and wrapped one arm completely around her waist and pulled her in tight, feeling every curve in her body clasped against him.
Katey felt a sudden burst of anxiety, but it was too late to turn back.
He sunk his fangs into her flesh and she gasped loudly. It hurt like nothing she had ever felt before, but she resisted the temptation to scream out. Katey dug her nails into Logan’s shirt and whimpered as she felt the venom course through her veins like burning magma. She gritted her teeth and tried to keep her breathing steady through her nose. Tears spilled from her eyes and streamed down her face.
It was like someone had injected a liquid fire in her, starting at her neck, flowing into her head and down to her arms and chest. As the venom spread to her heart, she felt something like an explosion that rattled her entire body. Katey felt completely breathless and gasped for oxygen. For the first time, she felt like she was really going to die. But the explosion slowly subsided and she could breathe again.
The Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 1) Page 34